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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844674">we are such stuff as dreams are made on</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyOfTheLake666/pseuds/LadyOfTheLake666'>LadyOfTheLake666</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes &amp; Related Fandoms</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon Compliant, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Heavy Angst, Literal Sleeping Together, M/M, Missing Scene, Season/Series 04, Sherlock Holmes &amp; John Watson Friendship, Sherlock's Violin, TJLC | The Johnlock Conspiracy</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-08-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-08-11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-05 05:02:13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,950</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/25844674</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyOfTheLake666/pseuds/LadyOfTheLake666</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>John isn’t coping well, after Mary’s death. One strange, lonely night, Sherlock intervenes.</p><p>A canon-compliant Johnlock one-shot set between The Lying Detective and The Final Problem.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Mary Morstan/John Watson, Sherlock Holmes/John Watson</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>10</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>55</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>we are such stuff as dreams are made on</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Mary kisses John squarely on the lips, her fingers tugging at his grey-blonde hair. A low moan escapes him as he presses closer, pinning her to the wall. His hand brushes against her collarbone, slowly trailing down.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“Patience!”, Mary laughs, opening her eyes to the dim blue light of the room, and cupping his face in her hands.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>“To hell with that”, smiles John, pressing hungry kisses down her neck.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>A sudden gunshot rings through the darkness.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>John jerks back and stumbles, as though he’d pulled the trigger. Mary is sputtering, something dark and oily foaming at her mouth. A stain slowly spreads across her chest, coating her lilac nightdress, his fingers as he cradles her in his arms. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>He is a doctor but he doesn’t know to stop the bleeding. He’s kneeling on the cold linoleum floor, unable to move. He is shouting for help, but he has no voice.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He looks down upon the face of the woman he loved, dying. Someone laughs behind him and he turns to look. A woman in black steps from the shadows, carrying a gun.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>Mary.</em>
</p><p>
  <em>He turns back to the body, still and unbreathing, sinking deeper into the puddle of blood. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Sherlock.</em>
</p><p>John Watson wakes up gasping, like a drowning man clutching for air. The fluorescent-green digits of his alarm clock, blink. It is 2:26 AM.</p><p>A cold damp wind bristles from the window of Baker Street.</p><p>For a few moments, he stares at a blank spot in his bedroom wall, beads of sweat trailing down his face, mingling with his tears. His heart is still hammering, hurting, as though he’s being stabbed by an invisible dagger, over and over. He looks down at his hands.</p><p>The faint lines of his palms stare back, bloodless, clean.</p><p>“Oh Mary!”, he mumbles, crying, shuddering.</p><p>Slowly, with trembling fingers, he reaches for his walking stick. It’s strange how suddenly, after all these years, he again needs to use it, especially at night, to go to the bathroom, to make his way through the semi-dark. He glances at the empty space in the bed, the space where Mary could’ve been.</p><p>He just needs to close his eyes again.</p><p>If he closes his eyes, he’s sure to feel her snuggled next to him, smell her perfume, hear her soft breathing. But he’s also afraid that if he closes his eyes this time, he’ll be back there, sinking into the bloodied linoleum floor, helpless, desperate, <em>pathetic</em>.</p><p>He isn’t unused to nightmares. Memories of Afghanistan resurface every now and then, the faceless men he’d killed in the war, haunt his dreams. But that is a familiar hellscape, populated with the roar of cannons, the smoke billowing through the fields, stitching injuries inside a tattered tent, bodies piling up all around him, the pleas for mercy as he amputated a limb. He’d wake up, sweating profusely as his eyes adjusted to the darkness of his modest flat and then let out a deep breath. Afghanistan had been a former life, a past that can no longer torment him.</p><p>But Mary’s death is a wound that will not stop bleeding.</p><p>He stumbles into the bathroom, splashing cold water across his face. He lets the water run down his neck before wiping his face. He notices the razor on the basin, that sharp silver glint.</p><p>He is about to grab it, but stops, looking into the mirror. The figure in a grey dressing gown that stares back seems different somehow- older, creased, faded, a wisp of the man he’d once been. The shame and regret that sit tightly knotted at his stomach, threaten to uncurl and he’s seized with a ravenous desire to smash that mirror into pieces.</p><p>His vision blurs.</p><p>
  <em>He is back in that darkened room, swimming with sharks. </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Time has slowed down and he can see the silver bullet clearly now, flying gracefully through the blue air, aiming for Sherlock’s heart and that damned man is still standing there, petrified and Mary is lunging forwards and he is screaming, crying, running and he can hear the sound of a crash and the walls are collapsing around him and he can smell blood, there’s blood everywhere and he holds up his fingers and his hand is covered in blood.  </em>
</p><p>
  <em>Mary is beside him, shaking her head knowingly and there’s Sherlock too, still wearing that shocked expression and someone is shouting his name but he doesn’t care, Mary’s dead, he’s dead, Sherlock’s….</em>
</p><p>Sherlock’s shaking him awake.</p><p>“John, John?”, he is asking, leaning over and peering into his face.</p><p>It takes a few seconds for John to realize he’d slipped on the bathroom floor and Sherlock is kneeling beside him.</p><p>“Ye-yeah”, he sputters, trying to sit up. His fingers are quivering.</p><p>Sherlock helps him up. His walking stick is on the ground, but he doesn’t need that with Sherlock holding onto him, with him <em>leaning</em> on Sherlock. And yet it’s still so difficult to walk, to take another step towards the bed, with the images still imprinted at the back of his eyes. He can almost taste the blood on his tongue.</p><p>It takes him another twenty seconds to realize that Sherlock is in <em>his </em>bedroom.</p><p>In all their years of cohabitation, Sherlock had never stepped foot into the upstairs room where John slept. He’d been in Sherlock’s room a few times, most notably when he had to half-carry a drugged Sherlock to the bed after the encounter with the Woman.</p><p>But Sherlock in <em>his</em> room, well, this was a first.</p><p>“Are you all right?”, Sherlock asks.</p><p>He doesn’t, he cannot reply at once. His eyes take a while to adjust to the dimly-lit room. The window is open, the curtains softly rustling and London is blue and quiet except for the occasional cab skittering across a rain-washed street. And then there’s Sherlock in his indigo dressing gown sitting beside him, his face pale with concern.</p><p>“Yeah”, John mutters, “Just a nightmare.” </p><p>“You called me.”, Sherlock states.</p><p>A mixture of anger and sadness prickles within John, even before he can notice it. But Sherlock does of course, but he doesn’t say anything and John is grateful for the small mercy.</p><p>“I did not.” His voice is clipped, quiet.</p><p>“You were shouting my name. And before that…”</p><p>Sherlock doesn’t need to finish the sentence.</p><p>John clears his throat. “It was just a bad dream. I’m…I’m okay now.”</p><p>And then, because it’s too late in the night and Mary’s been dead for a month and it’s been a few days since he moved back to his old apartment on Baker Street as he couldn’t risk his damned best friend dying of a drug overdose and he’s been bottling up all that pain and anguish and it’s so difficult to get used to the loneliness of sleeping alone when he’s had a warm body to hold close for all these months, he adds softly, “Thank you.”</p><p>For the fraction of a second, Sherlock looks startled. He then purses his lips and nods.</p><p>John should go back to bed. He’s a grown man after all, with a military past and he’s seen enough deaths for a lifetime. Of all people, he shouldn’t, <em>couldn’t</em> be afraid of nightmares. Yet Mary’s death had broken him, wrenched something vital away from his heart and he isn’t the same person anymore. Hell, he can never be the same person anymore.</p><p>Not even for Sherlock.</p><p>Sherlock, who’s sitting beside him and looking at him intently.</p><p>Sherlock, who’s offering him a white pill and a glass of water.</p><p>“What’s this?”, John asks.</p><p>“It will help you sleep. Nicked it off Lestrade a few weeks ago, knew it would come in useful.”</p><p>John stares at him.</p><p>Sherlock blinks. “I’ve checked the expiry date. You can take it.”</p><p>John sighs, faintly exasperated. “I <em>can</em> sleep, Sherlock.”</p><p>“I know.”</p><p>His hands tremble when he swallows the medicine. He coughs.</p><p>The air between them is cold, heavy with all that is left unspoken.</p><p>John sighs, again. He still looks shaken. “Okay,” he says, taking a deep breath, “so here’s the thing.” He pauses. “I…well, the therapy isn’t working. I still see her in my dreams, each night. Dying, over and over. And sometimes, sometimes, it’s not just her. But you…also you.”</p><p>He looks up at Sherlock with the face of a man who has seen the ghosts and has to live with them every day. They’re sitting so close, at the edge of the bed but not physically touching. Sherlock’s dark disheveled locks fall across his face.</p><p>He looks sad, and by the dim light, his features look strangely soft.</p><p>“I’m here”, he says, quietly.</p><p>John knows that’s Sherlock’s apology, something to make up for all that he cannot say, for his guilt at Mary’s death even though John assured him that it was her choice, that it wasn’t his fault.</p><p>
  <em>But it was his fault, wasn’t it?</em>
</p><p>“Are you going to stay?”</p><p>The words are out of John’s mouth before he realizes it. He meant it as a question, not an invitation.</p><p>“If it helps you sleep.”</p><p>They’re past a lot of things. John’s forgiven him for faking his death and then disappearing for two years and he is slowly forgiving him for Mary. And yet somewhere between exasperation and forgiveness, lay whatever he felt, still <em>feels </em>for his flatmate, his partner-in-crime, his best friend who made it clear from the very first day that John didn’t need to spell that out, that it is what it is, <em>whatever</em> it is.</p><p>And so, John pulls up the blankets and lies down on one side of the bed, while Sherlock makes himself comfortable on the other.</p><p>But Sherlock isn’t lying down or making any attempt to sleep.</p><p>It unnerves John slightly and he wonders briefly if Sherlock even sleeps on most nights, if the cogs in his brilliant mind are always whirling, thinking, turning, if while ordinary folks twitch in their nightmares, Sherlock takes a sojourn through his Mind Palace.</p><p>He turns to him. “Won’t you?”</p><p>Sherlock glances at him, as though the answer is obvious. “Later.”</p><p>John closes his eyes. The sound of a gunshot, blood splattering, bodies falling, assault his mind. He blinks his eyelids open and curses softly under his breath.</p><p>“I can’t”, he whispers, tears slowly trickling down his face. “Goddamn it”.</p><p>It isn’t embarrassment, but anger- anger at himself, the person he’s been, the man who stood and watched his wife being killed, the man who cannot always save the people he cares about the most.</p><p>He hates himself so much and Sherlock is the only person allowed to glimpse <em>that</em>.</p><p>He hates himself so much, he longs to drown.</p><p>Beneath the blankets, he feels someone else’s fingers tentatively, slowly lacing with his own. Sherlock takes his hand, squeezes it for a moment, and then lets go.</p><p>John looks at him and there’s something helpless and broken about his expression, and it’s almost familiar and then he realizes it reminds him of his own despair.</p><p>He isn’t alone on the battlefield, in that nightmarish hellscape.</p><p>He isn’t alone, in his pain.</p><p>And then he hears it. Soft, wistful notes, lacing into a melancholy tune. Sherlock is playing the violin, hoping to lull him into a soft sleep. The melody rises, heart-wrenching, breath-taking, full of the songs they can never share with each other, full of the heartbreaks they try to keep secret, full of the pain and love they cannot translate, and it devastates John, even as it pulls him, away and farther from the dark blood-stained waves and closer to a dreamless shore.</p><p>John Watson isn’t drowning anymore, but he sleeps, breathing softly beside Sherlock.</p><p>*</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>I recently rewatched Sherlock, after almost 5 years and my Johnlock feels are alive again, so here’s my humble contribution to the fandom. Do let me know if you like it and if you wanna read more!</p><p>I’m also on Tumblr as ladyofthelake666, so feel free to message me there if you’d like to fangirl over Sherlock or anything geeky or just say hi.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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